The Mourners

This series was created in response to the untimely death of a close friend. As I went through the process of mourning, I documented the experience by painting images reflecting the sometimes surprising emotional responses I felt. The major works are the three paintings of three views of the same model turning to the right. In the first, ‘The Unknown Country’, I wanted to show the oddly muffled emotions of the first stage, where nothing seemed quite real. Moving on to ‘the Dark Sea’, the raw intensity of grief is expressed in the sharp, almost painful clarity of colour against the turbulent and overwhelming ocean. In ‘the Return’, I show the ravaged earth softened with new growth as life begins to be reaffirmed.
(Hauser 2015)